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Counselor 990 Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://more.abcnews.go.com/sections/us/dailynews/egyptair_mclaughlin991031.htmlhttp://more.abcnews.go.com/sections/us/dailynews/egyptair_mclaughlin991031.html
Grief Counselor Pressed Into Duty
Disembarked From Flight 990
in New York; Consoles Families
Nov. 1 — The only passenger who got off EgyptAir Flight 990 when it stopped in New York was, strangely enough, a grief counselor for the airline.
Ed McLaughlin was soon at work counseling families.
McLaughlin happens to work for the Family Enterprise Institute, which helps airlines notify family members of air accident victims.
Eight hours after the plane went down, McLaughlin told a news conference, “We work with EgyptAir to try to help the families with the notification process. At the moment we’re struggling to get everything together.”
Flight 990 began in Los Angeles and stopped in New York before departing for Cairo. But the jet vanished from radar screens near Nantucket Island off Massachusetts shortly after leaving JFK Airport, and all 217 passengers and crew are believed dead.
Only Passenger to Disembark
Robert Boyle, executive director of the Port Authority, which manages the airport, confirmed that McLaughlin was on the plane as a “contract worker” for EgyptAir.
Boyle said McLaughlin was in Los Angeles conducting a seminar for EgyptAir and that he had been interviewed by authorities before going to work at the hotel where grieving family members were brought.
“His credentials check out, and he is currently working with EgyptAir with the families,” he said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Visiting Egyptian Canceled Trip Home
Another person also narrowly escaped the fatal flight.
An Egyptian man visiting a new grandchild in New York canceled plans at the last minute for a flight home on EgyptAir 990, his daughter said Sunday.
Said Abaza, 55, of Alexandria, Egypt, was eager to get home after spending five weeks in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn, but his daughter, Iman Mohammed, prevailed on him to postpone the trip for another week.
Mrs. Mohammed said her father, after learning of the plane’s disappearance over the Atlantic early Sunday morning, expressed thanks to God and added, “It is not a day for dying. If it was, I would be going.”
She said she wasn’t sure she had a premonition of the plane’s fate.
“I didn’t want him to go,” she said. “What I feel — I don’t know why. It just occurred to me that he should stay another week.”
She said her father, a widower who does not speak English, was on his first trip to the United States. He has two daughters in New York and other family in Alexandria, where he makes leather bags.
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